Boulder Toss Raekor Barbarian Skills and Runes
On this page, we explain how to choose and use your skills when playing Boulder Toss Raekor Barbarian in Diablo 3. Updated for Patch 2.7.3 and Season 26.
Active Skills |
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Passive Skills |
Rotation
In a Reakor Boulder Toss build, Furious Charge is at the heart of your
rotation, used both as a mobility and damage amplification tool from the
Raekor set. Aside from charging
around, remember that in a advantageous fight you can also charge against a
nearby wall to build up stacks faster, stay relatively still and maintain the
Endless Walk set bonuses. Keep up
Battle Rage at all times for the massive
damage benefits from
Bloodshed. Also keep up
Ignore Pain as much
as you could, ideally in anticipation of incoming damage. Last but not
least, apply
Wrath of the Berserker as often as you can, and use its
downtime for monster pulls. An ideal fight would feature a lot of trash and Elite
enemies pulled close to a wall or another in-game obstacle, which forces the
additional procs from the 6-piece Raekor bonus to detonate within range of the
pull. While
Wrath of the Berserker is up, you will need to use
Weapon Throw 3-4 times to get to the overextended Fury cap from
Arreat's Law, and then spend that Fury with
Boulder Toss. Then,
refill your Fury reserve by
Furious Chargeing into the mobs, do the
Weapon Throws again, and then
Boulder Toss — rinse and
repeat. This is your basic rotation while you have
Wrath of the Berserker
up. As a final note, the Raekor set amplifies your damage dealt based on missing
life — a precarious state that is further encouraged by the
Relentless passive. While you are undoubtedly at your strongest in that
sub-35% Life state, it is not a situation you should actively pursue within
active gameplay outside of very carefully considered and calculated
situations.
Skills and Runes
Your primary damage dealer is the namesake of the build,
Ancient Spear
Boulder Toss. This particular rune falls into the category of
"resource dump" skills, emptying your entire current resource reserve upon use
and dealing more damage depending on the amount of Fury you spend with it.
Points of Fury spent above the skill's cost (with RCR factored in) add 20%
damage to the total damage dealt. With
Arreat's Law, your Fury reserve
maximum reaches 350 Fury, skyrocketing the base 500% weapon damage dealt to
7160%, or a 14.32 multiplier. The strength of these numbers turn the skill into
a viable endgame progression spender.
Considering the crucial effect of Arreat's Law in the build, you will
have to incorporate the ranged Barbarian generator
Weapon Throw. You will
be taking the
Balanced Weapon for the improved Fury generation of that
particular rune. While
Arreat's Law improves Fury generation based on
distance from the enemy, you will need to maintain the 15-20 yard range at all
times to synergize perfectly between the
Battle Rage
Bloodshed and
No Escape effects.
While it is certainly not the focus of the build, both spec and gear-wise,
Furious Charge is nevertheless an integral part of this setup due to the
mechanics of the Raekor set. Using
Furious Charge builds up charges that
are used to amplify your
Ancient Spear damage; you should have at least 5
stacks for each
Boulder Toss, so keep yourself at a healthy high stack
count at all times. As mentioned above, keep in mind that you are not forced to
move great distances with this skill unless you want to, and you can charge
against walls and level edges to stay in one spot while building up power and
maintaining the damage half of the Endless Walk set bonus. Aside from Raekor,
this ability also serves as a Fury generator and a proc for
Band of Might.
Since the set brings you all the runes and you will not be dealing damage with
this skill, the rune choice is purely up to your preferences. We have selected
Merciless Assault simply to show the skill's cooldown self-sufficiency
when you hit ~3 or more enemies (or just one — refer to Raekor's 2-piece
bonus).
Battle Rage is a staple of the class, bumping up both damage and Crit
Chance. While its 2-minute duration can catch you off guard, never allow
Battle Rage to drop — it is a solid source of damage, especially
with the AoE-oriented
Bloodshed rune. Note the 20-yard range of the
Bloodshed rune, which should optimally be the furthest you are fighting
from — maintaining a mid-range playstyle.
No superlatives should be spared when talking about
Wrath of the Berserker, especially when paired with the damage amplifier of
the
Insanity rune. For the sake of brevity, this is the single most
powerful self-buff of Barbarians, providing you with significant amounts of
Dodge, Crit Chance, Attack and Movement Speed. Keep in mind this build only has
about ~70% uptime of this skill at best, and its timing is crucial for the
success of your run.
You have some wiggle room in your final active skill slot. Our base
suggestion is Ignore Pain: cutting incoming hurt in half, as well as
providing crowd control immunity as a baseline. The suggested rune is
Iron Hide, which simply lengthens the effect, although the healing
Ignorance is Bliss rune is also viable, considering the limited healing
options in this build. Alternative skills for this slot include
War Cry
Veteran's Warning (lesser damage reduction effect, but easy overlap
of the effect), or
Threatening Shout
Falter for additional damage against
affected enemies.
Passives
Due to your lacking uptime of Wrath of the Berserker compared to other
Barbarian builds, you will have to take
Boon of Bul-Kathos to shave
30-second chunks off WotB's massive downtime.
Thriving in and constantly pursuing a nicely stacked, dense, trash-heavy
fight, the Raekor is one of the most natural adopters of the Rampage
passive, which builds up your damage and defense multiplicatively as long as
you keep feeding it kills.
Relentless is one of the biggest passive sources of toughness a
Barbarian can take, and it has additional synergy with the low health empowerment
from the Raekor set 4-piece bonus and the craftable Cpt. Crimson set 3-piece
bonus, which scales damage reduction based on resource cost reduction.
You have some options in your last passive slot. The riskier option (but the
one that provides the most damage) is to take No Escape, which increases
the damage of several skills — most importantly,
Ancient Spear
— if you maintain a distance of at least 15 yards. This further reinforces
the 15-to-20 yard gameplay of this build. If you find yourself too glassy, this
is the slot to alternate to the cheat death of
Nerves of Steel. Or better
yet, consider using a
Stormshield as your offhand, and slotting
Sword and Board in this passive slot!
Changelog
- 13 Apr. 2022: Thorough rework of this guide into an Ancient Spear - Boulder Toss build.
- 09 Dec. 2021: Reviewed for Season 25.
- 22 Jul. 2021: No changes required for Season 24.
- 31 Mar. 2021: Adjusted skill recommendations.
- 17 Nov. 2020: No changes required for Season 22.
- 30 Jun. 2020: No changes required for Season 21.
- 12 Mar. 2020: No changes necessary for Season 20.
- 19 Nov. 2019: Guide revised and updated for Season 19.
- 22 Aug. 2019: Skill selection was clarified for Season 18.
- 13 May 2019: Guide was reviewed and approved for Season 17.
- 27 Jan. 2019: Minor revision to the passive selection options.
- 16 Jan. 2019: Information was reviewed and approved for Season 16 with no changes required.
More Barbarian Guides
Builds from Other Classes
This build is presented to you by Deadset, one of the very few professional Diablo 3 players. Deadset regularly publishes video guides on Youtube and streams on Twitch, where you can see how this and other builds play out in practice.
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